No one expects the Vortex of Chaos. It's ice on the sidewalk three days before Christmas, the driver who knocks the door off your SUV, the surgery that dims your voice, the cancer treatments that leave your brain muddled for months. But like the accretion ring surrounding a black hole, the Vortex of Chaos is also the neon sign that says you're still in business, that you haven't given up, that you're not willing to take it lying down.
Chaos is Life.

Dienstag, September 23, 2008

Yarny Things: Austria

First there was airplane knitting. This very dark photo is the pair of Bellatrix socks in Wollmeise Poison #5 (dark) that I started on the way outbound last week.

I didn't want to disturb people by having a light on during the night, so didn't knit much on the way to Vienna. A bad idea. I couldn't sleep, so I should have knitted. The flight attendants passed out eyemasks, after all.

There was some frogging, too--70 stitches was too many for my foot.

On the way back I knitted most of the time. This represents about 14 hours of knitting.

And here we have the car project, Sanguine Gryphon's Traveller in the Austria colorway (cute, I know). I think these are probably mittens, not socks. They represent maybe 5-6 hours of knitting, representing how long it takes to get from Vienna to Salzburg and back.

And then there was the yarn acquired there. I remembered a knit shop in Salzburg from our last trip, and it was still there in Universitatsplatz, right where I remembered it.

They have what looks like the entire collection of Opal Hundertwasser colors. I asked about the Harry Potter colorways, but they had not heard of them. I bought a couple of things that caught my eye.

The purple is Gedifra Aldato in colorway 9311; the gold is Gedifra Fiocco Oro in colorway 6607

Cherry got something froufy to knit a scarf, but left for Berlin before I thought to photograph it.

Die Wolle is not a serve-yourself shop. Most of the yarn is stored in neat and tightly packed rows of the plastic bags it's shipped in. When I reached to pull one out, the shopkeeper hurried to take it away from me. She was happier when I pointed to what I wanted and let her get it.

Then we went on to Vienna where we met Spinnwahn from Ravelry, and her husband.

He is a lifelong fan of St. Stephan's Cathedral and told us some terrific stories as we toured the cathedral. Later we had fun discussing kids, fiber, and politics over whipped cream-loaded hot chocolate, and Spinnwahn and I exchanged gifts and the trade we had arranged: I took her spindles and Knitpicks needles not readily available in Europe, and she gave me yarn she had spun and dyed.

As you can see, Spinnwahn is the Austrian version of die Wollmeise. These are some of her hand-dyed sock yarns:

Spinnwahn says that Vienna is not a hotspot for knit shopping. She orders most of her wool online. Salzburg might be a sleeper. Cherry, not wanting to waste time, did not point out the several knitting shops that she noticed and I missed as we wandered around the old section of town. Hmmm. Food for further research on another trip?

I swear my hair actually looks good sometimes; just not when I'm having my picture taken with someone (see me with the Yarn Harlot in an earlier blog post)

Kommentare:

Yes, you *have* lost weight. I need to get on the scale at work this morning, because yesterday I was doing that T-shirt hanging out under the cropped jacket thing that the younguns do [LOL] and realized that my T-shirt was looser around my tummy than I remembered. And that I looked *good*. Always a good thing when that happens.

Yes, I think you should go back to Salzburg and check out those yarn shops. I think I should go with you [looking about for a firstborn male child to exchange for my plane ticket, and coming up empty].